World Badminton Championships 2018: PV Sindhu sole Indian survivor on day of carnage after beating defending champion Nozomi Okuhara

On a quarter-final day, packed with seismic shocks that saw the exit of the top seeds in four of the five events at the World Badminton Championships in Nanjing, India’s Pusarla Venkata Sindhu stood firm as the Rock of Gibraltar to remain her country’s sole survivor as her compatriots in three events were ruthlessly cut down to size.

Sindhu gained some measure of revenge for her wafer-thin 21-19, 20-22, 22-20 reverse at the hands of Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara in last year’s titanic World Championship final in Glasgow, with a hardworking 21-17, 21-19 triumph in 58 pulsating minutes on Thursday.

The Olympic silver medallist will clash with another Japanese, Akane Yamaguchi, in the penultimate round on Saturday, but is already assured of a fourth World Championship medal to add to the two bronzes she had collected in 2013 and 2014, and the silver she won last year. Yamaguchi, the diminutive World No 2 wore down the No 5 seed, Chen Yufei of China, with a 21-13, 17-21, 21-16 win in 67 minutes, to reach her first World Championship semi-final.

However, Sindhu’s fellow-countrywoman, Saina Nehwal, who had earned a bronze in Glasgow, following a silver at Jakarta in 2015, was ruthlessly cut down to size by a rampaging Carolina Marin of Spain with a 21-6, 21-11 pummeling in a minute over the half-hour mark.

Frankly speaking, Saina simply failed to turn up on the day. If she had been all fire and brimstone on Thursday against the 2013 world champion, Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand, the blood in her veins seemed to have turned to ice on Friday in the face of Marin’s torrid pace and relentless aggression. The 2014 and 2015 world champion and 2016 Olympic gold medallist is back to the kind of form that had marked her out as the world’s best player for those three years; she gave Saina not a ghost of a chance.

Similarly, the last Indian standing in the men’s singles, Bhamidipati Sai Praneeth, was no match for the ultra-confident, smooth-moving Kento Momota. Praneeth managed only a dozen points in each of the two games in the 38 minutes it took the Japanese left-hander to tame the tousle-headed 25-year-old Indian, who had been lucky enough to get a walk-over from the No 4 seed, Son Wan Ho of South Korea, in his lung-opener.

The almost contemptuous dismissal of Praneeth’s challenge propelled Momota into a semi-final meeting with the unseeded 30-year-old Malaysian, Daren Liew, who edged Japan’s Kanta Tsuneyama by the tiniest of margins, at 22-20, 21-23, 22-20 in the day’s longest match, stretching to 81 minutes. The ebullient Japanese made up a 17-20 deficit in the decider, to restore parity, but failed to go the distance, and would likely spend a sleepless night thinking of the medal he missed by a whisker.

India’s somewhat forlorn hope in the mixed doubles, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa, also exited their event at the last-eight stage, being hustled out by a 17-21, 10-21 margin by the top-seeded Chinese pair of Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong. The match could well have been tighter, had the service judge not harshly faulted the Indians at 17-18 in the opening stanza, at a crucial juncture when they were threatening to restore parity.

Zheng and Huang ended up the only top seeds to survive the carnage, as all the other pre-tournament favourites fell about like ninepins. The Chinese armada rode roughshod over higher-ranked opponents on the strength of knowledge of local conditions and vociferous, partisan crowd support, to make up for their relatively indifferent performance last year, when they had managed to win just two gold medals in five events.

The biggest shock was the eclipse of the women’s top seed and long-reigning World No 1, Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei, at the hands of the sixth-seeded Chinese left-hander, He Bingjiao, by a 21-18, 7-21, 21-13 scoreline. The native of Jiangsu province showed that her outstanding form on the recent South East Asian circuit was no flash in the pan, as she forced the strokeful Taiwanese into repeated errors, and withstood the Tai blitzkrieg of the second game, to win convincingly.

Joining Tai on the sidelines was the men’s top seed and defending champion, Viktor Axelsen of Denmark, who had no answer to the brilliant court coverage and sound defence of two-time former world champion and 2016 Olympic gold medallist, Chen Long of the host nation. Chen just about managed to keep his nose in front at the tape in the tight first-game finish, but then floored the gas pedal in the second stanza, to decimate Axelsen’s challenge by a 21-19, 21-11 scoreline in a minute shy of the hour mark.

Chen will clash in Saturday’s semi-finals with compatriot Shi Yuqi, who did the Houdini act against Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei, and wriggled out of a 7-15 hole he found himself in, in the decider. Spurred on by the howling crowd, Shi went on the offensive against the suddenly tentative Chou, who probably could not believe he was winning.

The 22-year-old reigning All England champion, who had knocked out the legendary Lin Dan in his previous outing, wrested 14 of the final 17 points, to edge out the gallant Taiwanese by a 16-21, 21-15, 21-18 margin in an hour and 12 minutes of edge-of-the-seat badminton. Shi will have an edge over his senior in the China Thomas Cup squad, Chen, in Saturday’s semi-finals.

The paired events also witnessed upsets galore, with both the No 1 seeds in the men’s and women’s doubles biting the dust. Indonesians Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo and Marcus Gideon Fernaldi met their Waterloo at the hands of their most bitter rivals on the international circuit, the No 5 seeds from Japan, Keigo Sonoda and Takeshi Kamura, at 21-19, 21-18 after 48 minutes of thrills, chills and spills.

The only shock for the fiercely patriotic Chinese crowd on the day was the surrender of the women’s doubles No 1 seeds and defending champions, Chen Qingchen and Jia Yifang, to the impressive Indonesian combination of Apriyani Rahayu and Greysia Polii by a 23-21, 23-21 scoreline after a 68-minute battle of interminable rallies.

Incidentally, one rally in the men’s doubles went to 117 strokes, leaving all four gladiators totally squeezed out on the court, and sending statisticians scurrying to ascertain whether it had been the longest single rally in history. At the time of writing, no answer had been located, but the chances were that history had indeed been made.

And so, supporters of Indian badminton will have their eyes and hopes pinned on the lissome lass from the Pullela Gopichand Academy, hoping that she can grab this heaven-sent opportunity to sweep Yamaguchi aside, and go for the gold.

Sindhu leads Yamaguchi 6-4 in career head-to-heads, but has lost their most recent meeting at the All England, five months ago by a 21-19, 19-21, 18-21 scoreline. It had been just one more in a long string of matches in which the 23-year-old Indian has faltered in the closing reaches of the match with the scent of victory in her nostrils. Her well-wishers will certainly hope and pray that Saturday’s World Championship semi-final does not become yet another statistic on that unhappy list.